Primary malignant melanoma of the nasal cavity, report of two cases and review of the literature

Abstract

Primary malignant melanomas of the nasal cavity are rare, as only 400 cases have been reported to date. The present paper describes two cases recently seen in Caucasian women. The authors point out the difficult clinical diagnosis, as the symptoms are rather aspecific. From the histopathological point of view, diagnosis is easy in the melanotic cases while can show interpretating problems in the amelanotic ones, when melanoma is almost indistinguishable from other malignant neoplasms. A correlation between histological grading and prognosis was not detected, as both cases showed local recurrences within one year after surgery although they were, respectively, of epithelioid and indifferentiated type. While surgery appears to be the choice treatment of the primary lesion, the treatment of cervical metastasis is still disputable. On the whole, most authors think that the role played by radio- and mainly chemo-therapy is still limited and that cervical adenopathies should be treated by a simple lympho-adenectomy rather than by a neck dissection.